


A Trick of the Light

by vjs2259



Category: Babylon 5
Genre: Drama, F/M, Horror
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-03-07
Updated: 2007-03-07
Packaged: 2017-10-11 04:40:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,513
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/108502
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vjs2259/pseuds/vjs2259
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>What did Lennier see as they orbited Z'ha'dum?</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Trick of the Light

**Author's Note:**

> Gapfiller, S4, Hour of the Wolf
> 
> Standard disclaimer applies; not my characters or settings or backgrounds. But they are my words.

Lennier entered his quarters, called for lights, then closed the door behind him.  He set down the container with his evening meal, left over from what he had attempted to coax Delenn into eating earlier. It was very late, but there were still messages waiting for him on the Babcom. He sighed; he was having trouble  putting off the other ambassadors, trade delegates, and colonial emissaries. They all believed their business with the Minbari government was vitally important, and they all were demanding a response from that government’s representative. Covering for Delenn’s absences was getting harder and harder. She went to the most urgent meetings, but re-scheduled or cancelled many others. The alliance they had so painstakingly forged was fracturing, and rumor and speculation filled the station with a dreadful anxiety.

He had left Delenn praying again, presumably praying for Sheridan’s return. He wondered whether the Universe even heard her anymore, over the screams of the dying. Although the Shadows had paused in their attacks, the station was still swamped with incoming refugees, and the wounded, and the dead. Whatever the Universe was trying to tell them with this disastrous war, he hadn’t been able to hear it in his own meditations.

He put the food in the cooler for later; he wasn’t very hungry these days. Moving to the low shrine in one corner of his quarters, he decided to let the calls wait until morning. He needed to keep himself calm and centered if he was going to help Delenn through this. It was getting harder and harder to keep from her his own belief that Sheridan was dead. She, and perhaps Ivanova, were the only ones who still held out hope. He wondered what would happen when she had to face the truth. He lit the large central candle on the low table, then put three smaller tapers around it, lighting them each in turn. He positioned three prisms between the tapers, making a circle of light and reflected light. There was a small mirror on the wall behind the table, and as Lennier looked up, the reflected flames made his eyes appear to glow red for an instant. He started in panic, with childhood tales of the Preem’shak, the mind-wolves of legend, flooding his mind briefly. As his head jerked back, the illusion vanished, and he relaxed, even smiling at himself. The tension in their situation was obviously affecting him as well as everyone else.

He looked around his quarters. The rooms were not large, but he had many small luxuries brought from home. There were also heart-gifts, some his fellow monks and clan members had gifted him upon learning he had been chosen to serve Delenn, chosen of Dukhat. Some Delenn had gifted him from time to time; those were especially precious to him. After he had seen Marcus’ spartan quarters, he had wondered if all Anla’Shok were as single-minded. Uneasily he wondered if he had grown soft in the ambassador’s service. He was, after all, from a clan of fighting monks, not warriors, but skilled in self-defense.

He shook his head—this was not helping. He needed to focus on what would be needed from him in the coming days. As the light from the candle filled his eyes, and his mind was drawn to the center of the flame, he contemplated his mentor. She was grief-stricken, and paralyzed by feelings of guilt. She didn’t have to tell him, he knew her too well. Although he had long suspected Valen’s prophecies regarding the joining of the humans and Minbari would involve Delenn and Sheridan, he had not realized that her feelings were so deeply engaged. It would make this premature parting very painful for her, he supposed. For her personally, he thought it might work out best this way. He could not see how they could have made a life together, not a happy one, anyway. He was much more worried about the effect of Sheridan’s loss upon the war effort. He had become the linchpin of their combined efforts. It was possible Ivanova could fill the gap, but she was also overcome with grief and loss. Frowning, his concentration broke momentarily. Delenn had told him once that the person did not matter, that if the cause was just and right, and one person fell, another would rise up to take their place. There seemed to be something about Sheridan that made him less replaceable than others. Just then, the chime sounded on the Babcom unit, signifying a new message. He rose with a sigh, but answered immediately when he saw the message was from Delenn. She wanted him to prepare a ship for a rescue effort. After he assented and signed off, he wondered: perhaps this expedition would finally convince her to let go her hopes of the past, and begin to prepare for the future.

**********************************

Aboard the White Star, Lennier didn’t had a chance to speak with Delenn privately. She spent any time on the bridge talking with Lyta about the telepath’s belief that she could ‘feel’ Sheridan through their mutal link with Kosh. He didn’t think that sounded very likely, and he felt Ivanova thought the same. The commander looked a little less miserable now that she was actively doing something about the situation. That boded well for the future; perhaps she would be willing to take control of the war effort once she had convinced herself that Sheridan wasn’t coming back. But Delenn still had hope. She spent her time off the bridge in prayer or meditation. He hoped she was preparing herself for the potential, he felt inevitable, bad news, but he feared she was still indulging in false hope.

As they approached their destination, Lennier decided to put in a failsafe circuit. He wasn’t sure what they would find there, but he was aware that their enemy was subtle and powerful. He wanted to be sure that if he was incapacitated Delenn would get away to safety. As they approached Z’ha’dhum, he began monitoring the communication channels, particularly the one that would correspond to the Captain’s comlink. He was aware of the tension in the three women, but tried to concentrate on the signals he was receiving. They were mostly gibberish to him; he thought they could be inter-communication between beings on the surface of the planet, and ships beyond his sensors. He looked up as Delenn approached Lyta, and made contact with the telepath, trying to project her thoughts to the surface, trying to reach Sheridan. Made uncomfortable by her open display of desperation, he re-doubled his efforts to get a message through the static clogging the communications system of the White Star. He heard Lyta’s sharp intake of breath, “They heard us, they know we’re here” and braced for what would come next.

Suddenly he found himself seated in front of his clan elders in the temple on Minbar. They were looking at him solemnly, and one of them said, “Well, Lennier?”

“I am sorry,” he said in confusion, “How did I get here?” He looked around as if seeking answers from the carved stone walls. “Did you ask me something?”

“Yes,” one of the other Minbari answered, “What do you want?” He smiled gently as he leaned forward to hear Lennier’s answer.

“What do I want?” replied Lennier abstractly as he tried to figure out what was going on. This had to be some kind of trick. He had been on the White Star, they were orbiting the homeworld of the Shadows…his unease clicked into focus as he realized that the Enemy was in his mind. Determined not to answer their questions, he tried to shield his thoughts by focused meditative techniques he had learned in temple. The elders in front of him wavered and shimmered, a light flashed, and he was momentarily blinded. When his vision cleared, he saw that Delenn was now sitting in front of him. They were back on the White Star, in the crew quarters. She had been crying, and was clinging to his hands in her distress. He instinctively tightened his grip and asked, “Delenn, what’s wrong?”

“He’s gone, Lennier. I tried to believe, but I see now, it’s impossible. I don’t know what I’m going to do.”

“It will be all right. We will find another way to defeat the enemy. He has struck them a blow; we should capitalize on it.”

Delenn looked at him admiringly, “You are right, as always.” Then her face crumpled again, “But the prophecies…they cannot be fulfilled if he is dead.”

Lennier removed one hand from her grasp and gently touched her face, wiping away her tears. “You told me once that prophecy was a poor guide to the future, and that not all the prophecies were happy ones. Perhaps this was meant to be…or perhaps there is another meaning to the prophecies that we have missed.”

She sighed, and said softly, “As much as I loved him, part of me was dreading our joining. Is it wrong to admit that? We were so unlike, he could never truly understand our ways, our culture. I was afraid it would end unhappily, for both of us.” 

Lennier nodded, “I understand. But he tried very hard, Delenn. He did love you in his own human fashion.” Her physical closeness, and her emotional openness, was beginning to affect him strongly. He endeavoured to remain calm, and neutral, but his feelings for her had been growing and changing since her emergence from the Chrysalis. She had been so dependent on him after her transformation, at least until she had begun to depend more on the Captain. A small part of his mind protested that this could not be real, but the greater part wanted it to be, and so believed.

She moved closer to him, and said, with a catch in her voice, “You’ve always been there for me, Lennier, haven’t you? I’ve never told you how much it means to me…how much you mean to me…”

*****************************

Then he was on the bridge of the White Star again, standing at his console. Looking out the main viewscreen, he caught a glimpse of something huge, unbelievably old, and more alien than any species he had ever encountered. Its glowing red eyes seemed to pierce deep into his soul, seeing clearly what it was he really wanted. Delenn, Ivanova, and Lyta were standing in front of him, also gazing out the viewscreen, looking similarly enthralled.

“Take us down,” said Ivanova slowly and deliberately, as if in a dream.

Suddenly they lurched sideways, then backward, as the ship beneath their feet made an 180 degree turn, and accelerated away from the planet, opening a jumpgate.

Shaking her head as if to clear it, Ivanova demanded “What happened? How did we…”

He explained his failsafe mechanism, and received the order to leave the system and return to the station. Delenn looked at him in mute appeal, then asked if he had monitored transmissions up to the last moment. With only a hint of the intense pity he felt, he answered in the affirmative, and confirmed that there had been no answer from the Captain. After confirming the lack of response from the surface with Lyta, she left the bridge quietly, but her feelings were so obvious she might as well have screamed them aloud. After a few moments, he turned the navigation console over to a crew member, and left to follow his mentor, to see what comfort he could offer.

Lennier hesitated outside the small room set aside for meditation and prayer that was part of every White Star’s design. He knew he would find her here, but was unsure what to expect. His mind was still muddled from the Shadows’ projection of  Delenn into his mind, and he was finding it hard to distinguish what they had found in his thoughts, or possibly in hers---what was real, and what was fantasy. He wasn’t even sure his going to her was wise, in his present emotional state, but he couldn’t bear to think of her alone in her pain. Surely his natural reserve, along with his extensive training, would help him keep his own feelings in check. He took a deep breath, and opened the door.

As he had expected, she was there, and sitting on the floor in front of the low table upon which the ceremonial candles were displayed. What he did not expect was to see her openly sobbing, her head pillowed on her arms, her dark hair splayed over her back. He almost backed out the door, knowing she would not wish anyone to observe her despair, but he could not leave her. He approached quietly, sat beside her, and hesitantly reached out one arm and placed it across her shaking shoulders in a gesture of support. He had no idea what to say, or whether it would best to say nothing, so for a short while he relied on his light touch to simply let her know she was not alone.

Her sobs quieting, she sat back, looking straight ahead and said, “You should not have had to witness this. But,” here she turned and looked at him directly, “ thank you for being here, with me.”

“There is no shame in grief,” replied Lennier gently, “He was a good man, and the passing of such is often regretted by those left behind. You will see him again, in another life, or in the place where no shadows fall.”

Delenn smiled weakly through her drying tears, “I told him that once. Just before you and I went into the isolation chamber with the Markab. That was a terrible time, and you were there for me then as well.” 

“I have sworn to always stay by your side, Delenn, and I intend to keep my promise.”

She nodded sadly, then looking into his face, she reached up to touch his cheek. “You are truly a heart-friend to me. I do not know what I would do without you.” She lowered her hand to his chest, holding it palm outward over his heart, then touching her own chest with her other hand, she bowed slightly. Lennier’s eyes widened; this was a gesture of intimate friendship between equals. Uncertainly, he returned the gesture, then helped her to her feet.

“You should rest. It is a long trip back to Babylon 5. I will return to the bridge and let them know.”

Delenn nodded, and as they left the chamber, she turned in the direction of the sleeping quarters. He watched her walk away without a word, her back straight, but her gait unsteady. As he left to return to his duties, he remember what she had called him. ‘Heart-friend’, she had said. Hope flared in a small corner of his mind—perhaps he would come to mean even more to her in time. If anyone had been there to see him, they might have noticed a red flicker, like tiny candle flames, deep within his eyes.

**Author's Note:**

> I really didn't mean to turn Lennier into a Shadow thrall, it just turned out that way.
> 
> Initially my question was what did everyone see/hear at Z'ha'dhum? Delenn and Susan heard their fathers' voices, presumably urging them to come down and visit; but I always wondered what the others saw or heard. If the device was designed to reach into their minds and pull out the identity of the person most likely to influence them...who would Lennier see? And what would they tempt him with?


End file.
